


A Moment of Weakness

by Cinaed



Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: Dating, Developing Relationship, F/M, Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-28
Updated: 2006-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:11:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy takes David Phillips out to breakfast in a moment of weakness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Moment of Weakness

Wendy takes David Phillips out to breakfast in a moment of weakness. After all, he’s not even a "lab rat" but in fact a coroner, and that’s an entirely different level of the nerd hierarchy. She’s under no obligation to associate with him (unlike Hodges, to her continual dismay) and so she shouldn’t feel any pressure at all to take "Dave" out for a pick-me-up breakfast. 

Still, his hangdog expression and slumped shoulders and all-around air of utter dejection moves her to pity (especially once she remembers Greg mentioning that Dave’s fiancée has supposedly run off with some guy from a motorcycle gang), and in a rare moment of weakness she invites him to a little diner two blocks over from the crime lab. 

Dave pours out his story of woe over middling coffee and halfway decent bacon and eggs, about how his fiancée Erin had, in fact, run off with a man named Steve who was in a motorcycle gang. "She said I was too nice of a guy, that she wanted someone with…edge," he finishes with a sigh, and gazes mournfully into his cup of coffee. He peers into the mug intently for a moment, as though the secret to life is hidden in the dregs, before looking up and fixing Wendy with an earnest gaze. "I mean, what’s so hard about liking your average Joe? Not every guy is an alpha male." 

Wendy, who has always gone for one-night stands during which she has no idea (and doesn’t really care, either) if the guy she is sleeping with is an average Joe or a fellow geek or a "dangerous" guy like Steve, just nods and tries to look sympathetic. 

But Dave forges onward with, "Well, what kind of guys do _you_ date?" 

Wendy blinks and just stares at him for a moment. "Dave, I don’t…exactly…date." She’s choosing her words carefully, because Dave seems like the type who blushes at the mere thought of getting to third base before the sixth date. "I’m more into, ah, flings." 

"Flings?" Dave repeats, as though it is a foreign concept, and Wendy resists the urge to laugh at his nonplussed look, even though it _is_ kind of cute. "Haven’t you had a serious relationship that’s lasted more than a night?" 

Just for appearance’s sake, Wendy pretends to think and then after a moment shakes her head. "Can’t say that I have." (Unless that semester of sleeping with her anthropology professor for an A in the class counts, but she suspects it doesn’t.) 

She is more than a little startled at the glint of determination that appears in Dave’s eyes and the resolution in his voice when he says, "You should try dating one guy for at least a month." A slight smile touches his lips. "Think of it as an experiment." And judging by the way he’s looking at her, she’s thinking that he wouldn’t mind being her test subject. 

Wendy fiddles with her spoon for a moment, taking in Dave’s earnest gaze and moon-shaped face. She can’t really see the _harm_ in it, aside from the fact that her fellow lab rats will never let her live down the certitude that of all people to try to date, she chose David AKA "Super Dave" Phillips, and that this is probably a rebound for him. Still, one month of shared meals and movies and other ‘romantic’ stuff doesn’t sound half-bad. It would certainly be a change of pace. 

"One month? Sure," she says, before she can start doubting her own decision, and smiles back when Dave shoots a large, infectious, ear-to-ear grin at her. 

*

The next month passes quickly (it’s amazing how time flies by when every time you have a free moment you can call someone and he’ll take you to a movie or to the park or even to a bar), and as the final week draws to a close, Wendy has to admit she’s been enjoying herself, and she’s definitely learned a lot about "Super Dave." Like how he’s allergic to cats but secretly loves them anyway, or how he has every book on extraterrestrial theories in existence, or how when he’s had one too many drinks he lapses into a slight stutter from childhood that was eventually fixed with speech therapy. 

Wendy has also discovered they have a lot more in common than she had thought they would. There’s a mutual love of horror movies, even if they leave Dave jittery afterwards and Wendy checking behind her shower curtain for a few days after the movie, even when there’s been no shower scene (damn _I Know What You Did Last Summer_ had scarred her for life). They both indulge a bit too often on Chinese food -- especially with cashews -- and loathe Mexican with a fiery passion of a thousand suns. When drinking, they both prefer scotch on the rocks, although Wendy can hold her alcohol better. They both prefer heat to cold and cold to rain. 

Yes, all in all it’s been a fun month. Her only regret is that Dave has refused to sleep with her (she tries seducing him after the first, second, third, seventh, and fourteenth date, and finally has to concede that Dave isn’t going to go for a tumble in the sheets and that she will have to content herself with kissing). 

Not that Dave is a bad kisser. In fact, she’s found his sweetly awkward and warmly earnest kisses rather…endearing. They’re certainly a novel sensation compared to the self-assured, almost cocksure, kisses most of her one-night stands have pressed to her lips. 

She decides to blame it on the kisses when, exactly a month after Dave first sat across from her at the diner and told his tale of woe, he stands in her doorway after a movie and announces quietly, "So…the month’s up," she has another moment of weakness and says, "Well, actually, there’s a new thriller coming out next week. I just thought, if you wanted to go…." 

 


End file.
